What Else? Addressing Trauma with Continuum Movement

I have been inspired lately reading Bessel van der Kolk’s recently published book, The Body Keeps the Score. Highly readable, this specialist in working with trauma describes his journey involving surprising discoveries and research into the neurobiology of trauma and how to effectively work with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One of the chapters most fascinating to me is on how profoundly helpful yoga can be for those suffering from PTSD. I would love to see similar research done with Continuum Movement. 

I have been consistently impressed by how valuable Continuum can be as part of one’s journey in healing trauma, both in classes and, perhaps more surprisingly, in Skype sessions. In my workshops and classes, I am touched by how participants begin to relate to their experience differently once they’ve had a chance to deepen into the practice of Continuum. For example, they might comment on how the old familiar fear or pain came up but, instead of being overwhelmed by it, they were able to acknowledge it was there, remember an important question in Continuum of ”What else?” meaning “What else is possible here?” Being in the slow, fluid pace of Continuum, with enhanced space around their experience, they were more in a witness state, and were at choice about how to interact with their experience. They could then remember and try some of the breaths and sounds of Continuum that are particularly useful in shifting patterns and habits.

This freedom of choice is a key aspect of healing our trauma. Whatever happened to us happened. We cannot change that. We all have the history we have. It has influenced us and will continue to be available to us as part of our perspective and understanding of life. We do not however, need to be at the mercy of our history. Our trauma doesn’t need to rule us. Once we begin to create space around it, our relationship with it can begin to change.

This is where a mindfulness approach is so helpful in working with trauma. Research shows how mindful observation changes our neurobiology. Trauma often leaves us with an over-active amygdala. This important part of the limbic brain acts like a sentry, always on guard for any hints of the next attack or threat. When it detects danger, it signals other parts of the nervous system to prepare, setting off a stress response. Our sympathetic, fight flight system is activated, ready for the worst.

Image by BruceBlaus. Blausen.com staff. "Blausen gallery 2014". Wikiversity Journal of Medicine. DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 20018762. (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

This reaction is of course useful when there is actually danger present. The problem occurs when the amygdala and associated sympathetic nervous system are repeatedly or continuously activated, so that the person is hyper-vigilant and unable to relax. With this defensive system active, it becomes difficult to accurately perceive friendly social impulses. For example, a child I treat immediately reacts violently if another child accidentally brushes her shoulder. Once she has recovered, she feels ashamed of her outburst. In that activated state, she is unable to differentiate between friendly or accidental gestures and actual hostility or threat. This requires a different part of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex, which can calm fear, regulate emotions, and stimulate the social engagement nervous system. Without its support, it becomes almost impossible to have friends.

Mindfulness has been noted to settle the amygdala and activate the pre-frontal cortex. This effectively brings the person more fully into present time, where it is possible to accurately access friendly vs. threatening approaches.

I consider Continuum to be a mindfulness practice. We begin each session with some time in a “baseline,” where we observe our starting point in relation to our breath and ground. We note the qualities of the breath, where it moves in the body, how easily our tissues move with the breath. We also attend to the places where our bodies make contact with the surface we are on. To what extent are we able to rest or yield into the support of gravity, or do we resist and pull away from that support? How much of the body is resting or making contact? This quality of mindful observation can shift our neurobiology.

This, however, is just our beginning. We then enquire with various breaths, sounds and movement, practicing being aware of the sensations they invoke in our bodies as we explore with them. Can we sense the vibrations of an “O” sound, for example? Where do we sense it? How much of the body is resonating with it? This is an indication of how fluid or densified the tissues are. After practicing, we return to our baseline to check how things may have changed. Often, we find our tissues have softened. We have melted more into the floor. Our breath is slower, easier and fuller. We feel remarkably alive, refreshed and relaxed.

Our practice of Continuum has a major effect of slowing us down. When we are drawn into our trauma patterns, we tend to accelerate. Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, has referred to the “trauma vortex,” where we are pulled into the trauma history or pattern quickly, often before we even realize it is happening. Slowing down can help us to be more at choice in this process. Our perception widens. We can remember what supports or resources us in the midst of our conditions. In Continuum classes, I advise participants to notice when their movement speeds up or is familiar or repetitive. These are times to intentionally slow down, ask “What else?” and apply certain sounds, breaths and movements that can interrupt the pattern.

These kinds of tools can be empowering. Not only do we come more into presence and present time as we mindfully observe our experience; we also can operate less on automatic and habit. We have more freedom to make different choices, which can lead to different outcomes. The result includes changes in not only the nervous system, but also our tissues and our lives.

Emilie Conrad, Founder of Continuum Movement

Photo by Cherionna Menzam-Sills

Birthing Ourselves

It is spring. Baby chicks and bunnies have presented themselves as symbols of birth through the Easter holidays. Tulips and daffodils have been pushing their beautiful heads up through the earth to make their appearance in our gardens. The vegetable gardens are being planted with great care and enthusiasm. The earth is turning green again.

As I write this, I am on a train heading to the little town of Stroud, UK to teach a Continuum Movement workshop, inspired by the developmental movements of the birth process. I cannot help but perceive them occurring all around me! The baby coming through the birth canal senses the uterine and vaginal walls pressing against her delicate skin. Her time of simply resting and growing in the watery world of the womb is quickly passing. Her little head pushes and reaches into the opening in front of her, as waves of contractions meet her little body, washing her out into the unknown. Whether that time in the womb was entirely pleasant or overwhelmingly traumatic, what lies ahead includes unknowns.

How often do we encounter a similar sensations in our lives? I watch the children I work with, as well as my step-daughter, moving towards the end of their school year, accompanied by fears and anticipatory excitement about the unknowns of moving to a new school, a different college program, entering the work world are soon to bring. It is as if the waves of their lives are propelling them forwards, in concert with their own hopes and ambitions.

As a Continuum Movement teacher, I witness and participate in the enormous transition as we completed last month one year since our dear mentor, Emilie Conrad’s, passing and explore what and how we can co-create within this new field of the unknown. Like a serpent shedding its skin, we find the old form dry, tight and sticking in some places while we fluidly slither into naked being in the mystery.

Just one week ago, I returned home from sorting through the last bits of my mother’s life after her passing in July last year. Another wave of grief combines with the one from losing Emilie, as well as the relief that my time of working hard to take care of her affairs from 5000 miles away is essentially done. A new phase of life seems to be replacing the more familiar one of the last few years. I wait upon the threshold of this new life, letting go, letting go, letting go. No need to fight the forceps, the doctor’s timing, or the anesthesia with this birth. Skins upon skins are being released. I remember Emilie speaking of how snakes need to drink a lot of water when shedding their skin. I drink. I practice Continuum to deepen into fluid being. I observe the shifts as life morphs once again.

It is spring. Dare we to believe we know who we are? Do we want to carve ourselves in stone in this way? Or do we take the risk of letting go of what we know so well (and perhaps complain about so often) to make room for the new, the unknown. The promise awaits us, beckoning as the days lengthen and the flowers bloom. Can we have the courage, like the flowers emerging from underground darkness into the sunlight, to give that important push against the earth? That push that frees us, differentiates us, determines us from all we have known in the past? What is it you would create or welcome into your life if you were not so burdened with that one thing (or more) you hold so tightly onto?

It is Spring!

It is spring! The bulbs in front of my studio are presenting their colorful flowers for the first time since the studio was completed just as the darkness of winter was descending.

A few days ago I received an email from a Continuum Movement teacher, acknowledging the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. She wrote that it was just before Passover officially began last year, that our dear mentor, Emilie Conrad, founder of Continuum, passed away. In our modern calendar, the date was April 14^th. The teacher pointed out that Passover marks the passage of the Jews out of their life of slavery in Egypt. The waters parted for them to cross over the river into the wide open future of the unknown. This is freedom! She noted that the Hebrew word for Egypt implies narrowness. Liberation from slavery opened previously unavailable possibilities, a true widening of potential.

As I read the email, I began to think about Easter, as Good Friday was about to happen. I thought about how Jesus died on that day, and how on Easter Sunday a great miracle followed, as unexpected, unhoped for life came forth. This is spring!

We think of spring as being about new beginnings, new growth; yet, each birth involves a death. Spring can only come forth when winter dies! When we are born, our life in the womb ends. When a dear one passes on, we grieve and our hearts potentially open in new ways.

Perhaps, at this time of year, we can be reminded of our original potential, still waiting to be tapped. Anything is possible. It is spring! New birth is everywhere; why not in ourselves?

As I move into spring, I notice my tendency to try to do too much, threatening my health and well-

being. As much as I love all my work, I am reminded of the need for rest, for practicing what I preach! I am so fortunate to be immersed in a life of teaching people how to slow down and be present, reminding me repeatedly of the need and possibility to do the same.

Every time I give a Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy session, I am supported by the presence of what we call the Breath of Life in meeting the miraculous nature of our being. Every time I teach a Continuum class, I am blessed to feel the cells in my body breathing, the tissues letting go, the spaciousness and fluidity of being welling up within me. With every client session and workshop addressing early prenatal and birth trauma, I feel grateful to have this awareness of how our early wounding can occlude our potential, and how we can return to it through awareness.

This ode to spring is sounding like a Thanksgiving note! How can I not be grateful? Will you join me? Happy Spring!

Re-Connection and Renewal

“The body renews itself through its own dissolution, similar to the gel-sol phase transition of the cell. Paralysis can be seen as an uninterrupted manifestation of gel until the wind of breath, moving across and into the sequestered bound fluid, frees it into its vibrant potency.” - Emilie Conrad, Life on Land

photo from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADAPIMitoTrackerRedAlexaFluor488BPAE.jpg

Humans, unlike lizards, are known to be unable to regenerate limbs. What we are capable of in terms of healing and renewal is nonetheless remarkable.

I have had a few situations in my own life when I witnessed my own nervous system rewiring, as well as the honour of seeing this process in my clients and students.

My most dramatic event occurred immediately following a fall where I sustained a concussion. Lying dazed on the floor at the folk dance workshop where the accident occurred, I struggled to respond to the question being posed to me. There was doctor at the workshop, a friend of mine. Being employed at the time as an Occupational Therapist working with patients with neurological issues, I understood why the doctor was asking me the question. I also knew the answer. Responding, however, was another matter.

I have no idea how long I lay there trying to get my mouth and vocal cords to speak my name. It was as if every nerve in my body and brain had been singed by the shock of the concussion and they could not respond. It was possibly the hardest work of my entire life finding those pathways I had known so well for so many years. I could almost feel the electric wave traveling down my nerves, igniting each muscle, as if for the first time. When my name finally emerged from my mouth, I began to laugh. The whole room joined me. It was such a relief. I seemed to be re-connected.

I didn't know then how profoundly those moments would affect me and my life, and how many more subtler re-connections would happen over the years. The dissolution of my form experienced through the concussion, provided an remarkable opportunity to re-design my nervous system. My life changed accordingly.

My first, much less dramatic but equally educational experience with rewiring occurred the first time I tried to watch a movie with glasses on. I normally wore the glasses for driving, but being a young university student without a car, I rarely drove. For some reason, I decided to try my glasses on this movie. I was amazed by my experience. The colours and shapes flashing before my eyes were brilliant and fascinating, but they didn't make any sense! I didn't recognise them. Gradually, with great effort, I began to make out familiar objects. Faces came into focus and suddenly the whole scene fell into place.

I realised I had for a few minutes been learning to see again. I was reminded of stories of blind people gaining sight and having to learn to make sense of the visual stimuli coming in. That is exactly what I was doing. My brain was rewiring. It was learning to sort and organise the new sensory stimuli it was receiving into perceptions. Ah! Those lines and colours are a face. That shape is the branch of a tree. Once the connection was made, familiar neural pathways were again accessible and I could go back to just enjoying the movie.

My usual way of perceiving had been interrupted, facilitating a dissolution of patterning enabling renewed visual perception. While it is rare to have such clear experiences of rewiring, this kind of reconnection happens all the time. Being aware of the process is a great gift, which I believe also supports the connecting.

Interestingly, the day I woke up with this blog writing itself I my head, I later listened to an interview with one of my favourite speakers, cell biologist Bruce Lipton. He spoke of how bringing mindfulness to our everyday thoughts can interrupt early programming, supporting the change we desire.

Mindfulness has recently gained popularity and reputation as a valuable adjunct to psychotherapy. Research shows how it changes our neurobiology, assisting us in shifting from habitual defensive stances to more creative, present time oriented presence.

Lipton spoke in his interview of how cells can be either in protection mode or growth mode. One walls off the outside world. The other expands out it not it. We can make choices moment by moment as to which way to orient, but our cells cannot be in both modes simultaneously.

Mindfulness practices teach us to attend to the sensory input available to us, prior to the interpretations made by our minds based on history. Returning to this first order of experience enables us to be responsive to what is actually presenting in the moment, rather than being limited by our perception of it based on past experience. While remembring past experience can be useful, we are freest when it becomes part of the mix, rather than our overpowering master.

While I don’t recommend a concussion to anyone, those moments of re-finding my words gave me a remarkable opportunity to slow down and return to the basics of neural functioning. I remain forever grateful for that and other ways that concussion changed my life, interfering with my ability to operate on automatic.

The paralysis I experienced gave me a taste of the potential of dissolution. As Emile Conrad, founder of Continuum Movement notes in the quote above, allowing our form (gel) to dissolve into a more fluid sol state, enables us to access renewed vibrancy. Conrad often referred to how most of us are in a state of paralysis, solidly ensconced in our habitual ways of being. Dissolution and its associated renewal is a major intention of the slow micro-movements, breaths and sounds of Continuum. Personally, I prefer these gentle, mindful, fluid movement inquiries or the similarly subtle work of Craniosacral Biodynamics to having to heal from a concussion, but we all have our own ways of returning to and discovering our origins!